BIOGRAPHY

Kadet Kuhne is a visual and sound artist who aims to prompt visceral responses to the invisible forces that constitute matter and consciousness. Taking form in video, installation, soundtracks, 3D printing and 2D print, Kadet’s works have been presented at select venues Museum of Art Lucerne, Sundance Film Festival, LACE Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Sónar Festival, Mutek, Contemporary Art Center Villa Arson, Society for Art and Technology Montreal, and Crossroads Film Festival. Kadet received a master’s degree in Integrated Media and Experimental Practices from the California Institute of the Arts in 2004. Since then, collaborative, community involvement in queer and experimental art has been a vital part of Kadet’s practice, such as serving on the boards of San Francisco Cinematheque, Mediate Art Group, and San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, taking part in screening committees for Frameline LGBT Film Festival and Sundance, and developing projects with artists such as Mary Franck, Paul Clipson, Suki O’Kane, Gregory Dawson, Alba G. Corral, and mem1.

From a long-standing tradition of avant-garde filmmaking and improvisational music composition, I see my work as an extension of experimental practice in an age of hyper-communication and digital saturation. Prompting erratic and discursive thought patterns and emotional responses, my digitally manipulated aesthetic, contrasted with ambient reflection, is intended to heighten tensions between motion and stasis: a balanced, yet heightened “nervous system” to reflect our own.

Sound and image physically interact with our bodies’ molecules and stimulate neurological responses. I am interested in the nerve stimulus that causes our initial physical reactions, and in transforming these reactions into immersive works. Physical expressions can be transferred into images through digital media, which in turn can be translated into audible frequencies. For example, my videos can serve as either controls for audio playback or responses to sonic vibration, which then become a tool for audio instrumentation. A deep exploration of frequencies is executed with precision to captivate viewers’ visual and auditory senses and create an intimate world within each piece. I use pure tonal frequencies to represent my subject’s internal dialogue through various stages of consciousness. As patterns of visual information entwine with correlating sounds, a reconstructed map of the subject’s gestures becomes the language itself.

Through my video installations I seek to stimulate the viewer’s brain by composing synthetic stimuli to form somatic experiences which can prompt visceral, even pre-verbal emotional and physical responses to sound and movement. Comprised of intervals, disjunctions and suspensions of space-time, the situations presented in my experiential narratives attempt to capture, play and delay—from anxiety to resolve. Between pain, pleasure, the erotic, and the political, this tension morphs into another state, imbued with textures of self-imposed and societal boundaries and bondages. We wait patiently for moments of release to come—as they must—before we implode. My work exists for this moment of intensified perspective that can be reached somewhere between resistance and surrender. These simultaneous themes of constraint and liberation pose questions about personal power—how much we give to others and how much is taken. My exploration of this aspect of control stems from a deep interest in human communication, personal choice and the motivation of the will.

In each of my video installations I hope to open for the individual viewer an expanded sense of the possibilities and realities of their own bodily existence through a series of physically and emotionally sympathetic responses. In my own experience as a contemporary human, I have noticed a fundamental disconnection between mind and body, stemming from the often insufficient dialectical materialism of western philosophy which has informed and will continue to inform our being in the world: the most recent incarnation of which is the stripped down existence in a digital landscape. In my work I seek to create intimately personal connections with viewers through mobilizing many of the digital means which have facilitated disconnection in the first place.